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Women who deliberately end their pregnancies through abortion will be entitled to statutory bereavement leave under new Government rules which treat abortion, failed IVF, and other forms of pregnancy loss as grounds for grieving.
From April 2027, women and their partners who experience a pregnancy ending before 24 weeks will be entitled to up to two weeks of unpaid leave. Crucially, the Government explicitly says the entitlement will include “terminations” as well as unsuccessful IVF embryo transfers.
The policy is an insult to those in genuine need of better bereavement leave legislation, which should exist because something, or someone, of significance has been lost. Abortion deliberately brings about the end of the unborn child whose loss the state will now recognise as grounds for mourning, though not defending.
Following the recent passage of the Crime and Policing Act 2026, which removes criminal liability from women who end their own pregnancies outside the existing abortion law, creating a de facto abortion up-to-birth regime, many have pointed out the dissonance between the two policies. On one hand, the law strips the unborn of dignity and worth; on the other, employment law is being changed to recognise the intentional ending of pregnancy as a bereavement deserving protected time away from work.
If an unborn human life is significant enough for its loss to warrant statutory bereavement leave, why does that recognition disappear when considering whether that same life deserves protection?
The scheme also raises practical questions. Government guidance says employees will not be required to provide evidence of their pregnancy loss, in order to protect their privacy and dignity. Including elective abortion within a no-evidence bereavement entitlement inevitably raises the question of how employers could prevent deliberate misuse of the new right.
The inclusion of failed IVF is similarly troubling. An unsuccessful embryo transfer involves an embryonic human life created through IVF, yet the fertility industry routinely creates embryos which may subsequently destroyed or frozen indefinitely. The Government is therefore acknowledging the profound significance of embryonic loss while maintaining a system in which embryos can be treated as disposable.
The entitlement will even extend to commissioning parents in surrogacy arrangements.
Helen Gibson, founder of Surrogacy Concern, said that while mothers should receive bereavement leave following the death of a child, “in surrogacy arrangements it is still the birth mother who is bereaved.”
“Extending bereavement leave to commissioning parents through surrogacy risks further entrenching a harmful practice which we should be working to eliminate, not further normalise,” she said.
The policy inadvertently concedes something the abortion, IVF, and surrogacy industries frequently obscure: pregnancy involves a human life whose loss can matter profoundly.
SPUC CEO John Deighan commented on the new policy, saying, “SPUC will always stand for the dignity of the unborn, so we will always welcome policies that allow mothers to grieve miscarried children. The tragic and unintentional loss of babies wounds families and parents should not be forced back into work before they are ready. This scope of this announcement, however, is too wide and is an insult to those who have experienced miscarriage.
“Abortion trauma is real, but rewarding abortion with a policy designed to comfort those who miscarry is horrific; it puts abortion on an equal footing to miscarriage—it is not. Whilst the child has equal dignity in both scenarios, one requires intentional violence to end destroy life, the other is a grave and spontaneous tragedy. The policy could even act as an incentive to either lie about or procure an abortion for the sake of time off.
“The Government have shown that they have no consistent ideas when it comes to life in the womb. Is it valuable and something to love and grieve or not? We know the answer.”
